Response to Robert Scoble & Shell Israel’s “Naked Conversations”

In the first half of Scoble and Israel’s “Naked Conversations,” the authors tout the blog as the newest corporate strategy for connecting with customers and all their key stakeholders while encouraging readers to ‘join the conversation.” The authors detail real-life case studies of successful business bloggers and offer advice to prospective bloggers

Scoble and Israel use Microsoft as an important case study, and continue their discussion of the corporation’s blogging efforts throughout the first half of the book. By developing a strategic and open blogging policy, Microsoft has embarked on the important task of healing its damaged public reputation. Slowly Microsoft is regaining trust from its constituents, transforming itself from the “evil empire” to a more open, trustworthy corporation. Through the eyes of the authors and several key blogging innovators at the company, this transformation is taking place because of blogging. According to former Microsoft blogger Lenn Pryor, when interviewed by Scoble and Israel, ‘Today, Microsoft is building relationships, while six months ago we were losing them’ (18).

In chapter two, the authors introduce a simple but powerful quote, relative to all developments and technology, “everything never changes.” While blogging is rapidly catching on (it is one of the fastest growing technologies in history) and shifting the way we communicate, in the larger scheme of things, it still hasn’t caused the kind of impact some predict. As the authors note, we won’t be able to measure the true impact of this new ’blogosphere’ until many years from now when we can see how business conversations have really been altered.

The authors define blogs in the context of six important elements, a combination of which is not found in any other medium. A successful blog must be: Publishable, Findable, Social, Viral, Syndicatable, and Linkable. For new bloggers, these pillars are an important start to building a successful blog. According to the authors, bloggings most important advantage is that it lets you listen to what your stakeholders and the public in general are saying about your product as well as allowing you to join the conversation.

I found Chapter 6: Consultants Who Get It, to be one of the most interesting and applicable chapters in Scoble and Israel. For those of us always searching for fresh tools and campaign ideas, this chapter offered some good advice from consultants specializing in blogging as well as from the authors. The authors bring up some important questions at the end of the chapter: Is blogging marketing? Consultant Toby Bloomberg believes blogging can be integrated into a companies’ marketing mix, because marketing and blogging are both about forming customer relationships. Scoble and Israel disagree. and claim that that instead of simply merging or integrating blogging with existing marketing campaigns, we should be

As with all new technologies in the Web 2.0 generation, questions arise with utilizing blogging as part of a Marketing or Public Relations Strategy. Perhaps I am biased since I am a Marketing Specialist for the “Evil Empire” Microsoft, but encouraging corporate executives and employees in general to blog seems to be one of the only logical steps to regaining consumers’ trust. Sales naturally branch from trust. I left my job as a PR and Marketing Specialist at an IT consulting firm that was extremely weary of participating in Web 2.0 practices. Everytime I mentioned blogging or social networking as a new strategy, I was outvoted. It was a very drastic change leaving a tech company still stuck in their old school ways to come to a tech company that openlyencourages marketers and all employees to blog (within corporate legal boundaries of course).

While there may be no clear metrics yet for measuring the impact of corporate blogging, I believe its impact can be measured simply by the comments readers leave, the blog posts others are writing and what they’re actually saying about the individual and company, and the company/executive’s Google rankings. According to Scoble and Israel “Google Juice” or the ranking a blog appears in a search engine, is vital to getting attention and awareness in the blogosphere.

Similar to how managers and executives were unsure at first of how to measure a PR campaign’s results ( some still struggle with it), it will take some time and catching up before we are able to truly measure a corporate blog’s
effectiveness. It definitely goes beyond ROI… the investment in this case, is not money, but time. And, although some would argue that a busy executive’s time is equal to money, the time and thought that goes into writing a blog post are tough to measure. I think we would all agree after writing several blog posts for this class, that it’s far from easy sometimes to find the time and the interesting ideas to post on our blog to make it actually worthwhile to readers. Honestly, after all this, I still felt a little skeptical about blogging until recently… I think I’m finally starting to
believe though, partly thanks to Scoble and Israel.

The Beauty of the RSS Reader

I can’t believe I just discovered this!….all this time I’ve spent precious hours going to my favorite websites and blogs while eating breakfast, lunch, taking a coffee break, etc., I could have been getting this same material delivered right to my Outlook or Google Reader page. I think I’m in love. For someone who works in the high tech industry, I sure have been out of the loop! Check out my shared items at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/11904683093872464818

While it would be an exhausting feat to read through every single one of these 500+ items per day, I’ve taken Nicco’s advice on a more manageable strategy. A few times a day when I have a minute to spare, I’ll go through the new items in Google Reader and glance at the headlines. If I don’t have time to read the ones I’m interested in, I’ll put a star next to them and come back to them later.

It still beats visiting all 30 something of these webpages every day, which would never happen. This way I get to read what I want and I can pick and choose what is most important or what I have time for.

Response to Cory Doctorow- Essential Blogging

In the first chapter of Essential Blogging, Cory Doctorow et. al. provide an interesting and accessible primer to those unfamiliar with the blogging concept. In his introduction, Doctorow injects humor and his first-hand experience with blogging into his writing to assist readers in grasping the concept and importance of blogging. One of my favorite quotes reminded me of myself and the way I’ve always devoured everything I could get my hands on in the way of articles and information (although lately it seems I have been slacking due to a packed schedule and being seriously over-extended)… “I have always been an avid infovore and a promiscous communicator, ingesting factoids by the netload and excreting them over anyone who’ll hold still. I love learning new things and before I had a blog, I’d write myself little notes and pass along choice tidbits to friends by email.” Now that I have officially entered the “blogosphere,” I look forward to having a space to pass along all those interesting articles and tidbits of information I find.

 Doctorow describes the important elements of a blog as the title, picture, posting, quote, link, discuss link, and attribution. This information will be helpful when starting to write my own blog.

I checked out the blog Doctorow contributes to, Boing Boing which I found extremely hard to keep up with and very few posts by Doctorow himself.  I counted about 20 posts in one day. However, I also checked out Doctorow’s personal blog, Craphound and discovered he just had a baby, which could explain his lack of posts.

Hello world!

Here goes… my first experience as a blogger….